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A new year, and it is capital projects month on the Paperitalo Editorial Calendar. In my nearly forty-six years in this industry, I have seen capital projects from all sides. I have seen so many projects, from the truly frightful to shining examples, that I could write a book. In fact, I did, "The Lazy Project Engineer's Path to Excellence." There are something over 1,000 copies of this book in the field at this time. It doesn't hurt that all graduates of every pulp and paper school in the United States head to their first jobs with a copy of this in their hands. (If your school is not in our program to receive these for each of your graduates, please contact Helen Roush--helen.roush@taii.com--for more information on this program.)

I want to start this month's columns with a slightly different slant. I want to begin by talking about the relationship between suppliers and owners. Note that I use the word "suppliers" almost exclusively. I almost never use the word "vendor"--a "vendor" is the person on the midway at the fair who sells me a paper tube wrapped in cotton candy. The word "vendor" seems insulting to me. I also prefer "owner" or "client" to "customer." A "customer" is the person on the non-working side of a cash register who responds yea or nay to the question, "Do you want fries with that?" The word "customer" is also insulting in my way of thinking.

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Yes, it all starts with respect for all parties and what they bring to the event: your capital project. There should be respect for all parties but there is one unbalancing element to the entire process. The party inking the checks has the power. No one should ever forget this. So, from the beginning, the Owner has the power and the Supplier, while bringing valuable expertise to the party (why else would the Owner exchange money for what the Supplier has?), in the form of technology disguised as equipment, software or some other tangible element, brings assets, but the check writer is in charge of decisions. You can pretend to be friends, you may indeed develop friendships beyond the duration of your project, but while the project is under way, never forget your role, no matter what it may be.

While we are in the preliminaries in this column, we might as well discuss graft, under the table dealings, or whatever else you may want to call it. We outline this in gory detail in the month of the year where I write the "Pulp Rats" columns, which would be corruption month. You may be surprised at whose feet I will lay the problem of graft--Suppliers. If Suppliers were not willing to give graft, graft would not exist. This is where the power of the Owner as check writer can be rendered null and void by Suppliers who have the confidence and ethics to win contracts fairly and squarely without resorting to bribery. I've stated before and I will state it again, there still are certain regions of the United States where I will not even bother calling on the mills because the Suppliers in those regions have trained the mill personnel to expect kickbacks in exchange for business.

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So, let's start out the month, expecting respect for all sides, competence from all sides, and fair dealings by all parties. For if we cannot start here, then budgets, schedules, performance standards and project success are mere dreams. No project has enough slop in the budget, nor should it have, to tolerate the sort of sloppy non-professionalism and chicanery I have referenced here.

Your thoughts, please. You may take our weekly quiz here. This is a great quiz and we need both Owners and Suppliers to respond to it!

For safety this week, shoddy equipment purchased by buying the favors of the Owner through corruption can lead to employee injury, death, and criminal conviction for the perpetrators.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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